I'm thinking back to when I was a child
Way back fo when I was a tot.
When I was on embryo
A tiny speck. Just a dot.
When I was a Hershey bar
In my father's back pocket.
- Laurie Anderson "Smoke Rings"
The winner of "The Lucky Sperm Contest" was announced yesterday. Princess Wigglesworth and Prince Valiant had a baby boy, and the world could breathe a sigh of relief as it apparently came out with ten fingers and toes and was of the proper race and pale skin color, in keeping with His Royal Highnessness.
It got me to thinking - as such nonsense often does - as to how we are selected to win (or lose) these genetic lotteries. How does the Royal Sperm become the Royal Sperm?
I suspect that most of you haven't given much thought as to how you became who you are. Either because it's pointless to consider or difficult to grasp. Whatever, the notion is interesting to me. Perhaps I am selling you short, and you have given thought to how you arrived here - reading this and/or clicking on a Facebook link in your pajamas, ruing the fate of your job, congratulating yourself on your accomplishment or generally happy or unhappy with how you turned out in life.
Most of it had nothing to do with what you have accomplished or what you did. Much of it had to do with where your seed was planted. Perhaps that is why you haven't given it much thought (if you haven't)? Perhaps you do not wish to give up your fate to the whim of chance? If you are frank with yourself, you may ask yourself, "How did I get here?"
It's a fair question. How is it that some are born into royalty and others of us wind up as specks? Thinking about it may spin your mind into a vortex similar to contemplating the infinite Universe - or it may place you into a perspective that could ... I don't know ... bring some solace to your life?
I don't have any answers, just a lot of questions. You'll have to come up with the answers on your own.
Talk amongst yourselves.
